The extinction of the woolly mammoth: was it a quick freeze?

Summary

Apart from formerly glaciated areas, woolly mammoth remains are abundant in the
surficial sediments of the mid and high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, including
western Europe, northern and eastern Asia, Alaska and the Yukon. There are probably
millions of mammoths buried in the permafrost of Siberia alone. The mammoths are
found with a wide variety of other mammals, large and small, many of which were
grazers. They lived in a grassland environment with a long growing season, mild
winters, very little permafrost, and a wide diversity of plants—quite different
from the climate in the region today.

The mammoths and other animals colonised the region after the Flood during the ice
age. The region’s climate during the ice age was ideal for rapid population
growth and, in the 600 or so years before their demise, the population had grown
to many millions of animals. They were buried in the dust storms that deposited
the loess blankets found in those regions today. Some were entombed in a standing
position. The good state of preservation of the stomach contents does not call for
super-rapid freezing of the carcasses. Rather than food digestion, the mammoth stomach
acts as a food storage pouch. The mammoths became extinct when, at the end of the
ice age, the climate in the region became more continental, with colder winters,
warmer summers, and drier conditions.

Frozen carcasses and many thousands of tons of bones and tusks of woolly mammoths
are buried in Siberia and Alaska. In March 2000, the Discovery Channel produced
a special on the excavation of a carcass in north central Siberia, called the Jarkov
mammoth. This mammoth was cut out of the permafrost and transported by helicopter
into cold storage for future analysis and possible cloning.1

Mammoth remains have puzzled scientists and laymen for hundreds of years. Many explanations
have been offered. One of the most popular hypotheses is that one eventful day,
the hairy elephants were peacefully grazing on grass and buttercups when suddenly,
tragedy struck, and millions of them froze instantly.

This article examines the life and death of the woolly mammoth in Siberia, Alaska,
and the Yukon Territory of Canada. These areas, together with the surrounding shallow
ocean (Bering Strait), are called Beringia. There are still unknowns associated
with the woolly mammoth and its environment in Beringia. Some information is conflicting.
However, the data is pointing to a unique environment and extinction of the woolly
mammoths in Beringia.

What is a woolly mammoth?

A woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) is one of several types of mammoths
in the genus Mammuthus within the order Proboscidea. The woolly mammoth
is essentially a hairy elephant with a large shoulder hump, a sloping back, small
ears, tiny tail, unique teeth, a small trunk with a distinctive tip and two finger-like
projections, huge spirally curved tusks up to 3.5 meters long, and spiral locks
of dark hair covering a silky underfur.2

Mammoths are classified mainly on variables such as molar hypsodonty (height of
the crown), number of lamellae (ridges on crown), and enamel thickness. History
shows there has been much taxonomic splitting of mammoths, as well as other members
of Proboscidea. It is likely that they are all descended from a single created kind.2 In general, there seem to be two main varieties of mammoths
on both Eurasia and North America. The woolly mammoth is the smaller variety that
generally inhabited the north. The second, more southern variety, from both Eurasia
and North America can be lumped together for simplification and referred to as the
Columbian mammoth (Mammuthus columbi).

Figure 2. Distribution of woolly mammoth remains, and the mammoth
steppe. Glaciated areas are shown speckled. Mammoth steppe is shown hatched. The
area referred to as Beringia is shown separately (after Guthrie143). Note that the extent of the northern and eastern
boundaries of the Scandinavian ice sheet is controversial.

Mammoth distribution

Mammoths are commonly found in surficial sediments from western Europe eastward
through northern and eastern Asia, Alaska and the Yukon (Figure 2).3,4 Mammoth remains
are also found on some of the islands in the Bering Sea5,6 and are dredged from the shallow continental
shelves surrounding Beringia.7,8 Enormous numbers of ice age mammals, most commonly mammoths,
are dredged up from the unconsolidated sediments of the North Sea by trawlers.9 Woolly mammoths are found in abundance
south of the North American ice sheet. They are rare in formerly glaciated areas.
Mammoth and mastodon teeth have been dredged from 40 sites along the continental
shelf off the eastern US in water up to 120 m deep.10

In Siberia, the woolly mammoth inhabited the whole area from the Ural Mountains
to the Pacific Ocean. Their east-west distribution is generally uniform, except
that they are especially abundant in northeast Siberia.11 Their numbers increase farther north.12,13 Mammoth
remains are amazingly abundant on the Lyakhov Islands14
and the other islands of the New Siberian Islands, 230 km north of the Arctic coast.12,15 Frozen mammoth
carcasses are usually found eroding out of river banks and along the shore of the
Arctic Ocean.

Mammoth fauna

Woolly mammoths are not the only fossil mammals found in the permafrost of Beringia.
There are a wide range of other mammals, large and small, that accompany the mammoths.
These include the woolly rhinoceros, wolf, fox, lion, brown bear, camel, deer, ground
sloth, pika, wolverine, ferret, ground squirrel, moose, reindeer, yak, musk ox,
giant beaver, lemming, porcupine, coyote, skunk, mastodon, antelope, sheep, voles,
hare and rabbit, plus many species of birds, rodents, horses, and bisons.4,16–19 Frozen carcasses of these animals, especially
the woolly rhinoceros, are also found. Generally, the same animals are found together
throughout much of the mid and high latitudes of the Northern HemiÂ­sphere.3,20

How many mammoths are buried in Siberia?

There has been much controversy over how many woolly mammoths are frozen in the
permafrost of Siberia. A few scientists attempt to downplay the number,21 but practically all observers describe the number in
superlatives.

The top expert on woolly mammoths in Siberia, Nikolai Vereshchagin, has spent nearly
a half century of research on the mammoth fauna. He states that there are many hundreds
of thousands of large mammals buried in Siberia22
and also many millions of bones.23
One estimate he made for one region of Siberia would suggest five million mammoths
buried.24 Is he exaggerating? It
would be conservative, therefore, to conclude that several million mammoths are
buried in Beringia.

Perplexing mammoth data

There are many perplexing aspects to the Siberian mammoth finds, including the existence
of frozen carcasses and the good preservation of their stomach contents. In addition,
a number of the carcasses and skeletons have been unearthed in a general standing
position, as if the animal sank in a bog.25–27 The Selerikhan
horse was entombed in a general standing position.28
The new Jarkov mammoth was dug up in a standing position.

It is also relevant that an analysis of several features of the carcasses shows
that three woolly mammoths and two woolly rhinoceroses suffocated, including
the Beresovka (or Beryosovka) mammoth.29–32 The Beresovka mammoth
also had a broken pelvis, ribs, and right foreleg.13,27

For carcasses to be frozen and the bones and tusks well preserved, quick burial
is necessary. But how could all these woolly mammoths have been forced into the
rock hard permafrost, which starts about half a meter deep, below the summer melt
zone?

Beringian paleoenvironmental deductions

The animals themselves tell us much about the paleoenvironment —a controversial
subject.33 The diversity of animals
was so great that there must have been a highly diverse vegetation.34 The only similar diversity of mammals is on the Serengeti
of East Africa.34,35
Practically all the large mammals were grazers that ate a wide variety
of herbaceous vegetation, mainly grasses. Based on the large numbers of healthy
individuals, Beringia, as well as Europe and western Russia, must have been mostly
one huge grassland during the ice age, called the mammoth steppe or steppe tundra
(Figure 2).3,34,36,37

Figure 3. Ability of animals to walk through deep snow or to stay
on top of crusted snow depends on foot loading and chest height (after Guthrie).144 The sheep and wolf could
not have tolerated deep snow or boggy substrate.

To maintain a large variety of herbaceous vegetation on the mammoth steppe would
have required a long growing season with warm soil and rapid spring growth.38 This contrasts strongly to the
current environment where green vegetation does not appear in northern Siberia until
mid June to early July.39 Ninety
percent of the biomass of grass is in the roots below the surface, and the grass
cannot grow until the snow melts and the soil warms up. Therefore, winters must
have been milder with light snowfall. The growth pattern of the mammals
reinforces the deduction of a longer growing season.34
The shaggy ruffs, heavy horns, long tusks, and enormous antlers are what wildlife
managers would recognise as indicators of high-quality habitat with light
competition and a long growing season.40
Open range with light snowfall during winter is also supported by the existence
of several animals that are intolerant of deep snow, such as the saiga antelope,
bighorn sheep, Dall sheep, and wolf (Figure 3).41

With milder winters and a longer growing season over an extensive grassland, it
is likely that there were no significant areas of permafrost. This is because permafrost
would have caused a boggy substrate in summer, making it difficult for much grass
to grow. Further paleoecological evidence for a lack of permafrost comes from the
existence of some animals with small hooves, such as the saiga antelope. This animal
cannot manage on boggy substrate. Furthermore, there is plenty of other evidence
that the climate of Siberia was once much warmer, but again this evidence is somewhat
obscured by uniformitarian dating and pigeonholing the evidence into supposed ‘interglacial’
and ‘interstadial’ periods.42

Mammoth uniformitarian problems

How millions of mammoths became entombed in Siberian permafrost really taxes the
uniformitarian principle. Why would multitudes of mammoths, plus the many other
animals, even want to live in Siberia with its fierce winters and summer bogs? What
would these large beasts eat? Siberia today supports only a very few large animals,
and these are especially adapted to boggy vegetation and often migrate to escape
the full force of winter. Most perplexing of all, how did the woolly mammoths die
in Siberia? Was it a quick freeze? Was man the hunter responsible for the demise
of the mammoths?

Today, Siberia is well known for its bitterly cold winters. The lowest temperature
in the Northern Hemisphere is -68°C at Verkhoyansk.43 Large mammals can usually tolerate a fair amount of
cold. But could the mammoths, horses, bison, and other animals tolerate 6 to 9 months
of bitter cold with even colder wind-chill temperatures in blizzards? Vereshchagin
and Baryshnikov44 state: ‘There
would be no place for mammoths in the present arctic tundra of Eurasia with its
dense snow driven by the winds.’

Could the animals have lived in Siberia today during the relatively warm summer,
perhaps migrating there from the south? The temperature likely would have been pleasant
for them, but the environment deadly. Siberia today is in the permafrost zone where
up to a metre of the surface melts in the summer. Water pools on the surface forming
massive bogs and muskegs, making summer travel difficult, if not impossible, for
man and beast.44,45
Tolmachoff46 states that a few
inches of this sticky mud makes the substrate practically impassable for a man,
and that a foot or more would probably trap a mammoth.

Siberia may be lush with vegetation in the summer, but it is the wrong type. Although
there are patches of grass, bog and muskeg vegetation predominates, and these are
low in nutrition for grazers.47
The taiga forest vegetation south of the current tundra is also poorly digestible
for grazers.48 Comparing living
elephants to mammoths, the daily requirement for a woolly mammoth would have been
about 200 to 300 kg of succulent vegetation49
and 130–190 litres of water! Vereshchagin50
flatly declares: ‘Neither mammoth nor bison could exist in the sort of tundra
that exists there [in Siberia] today.’

The problem is even more paradoxical in a uniformitarian ice age climate. Ice age
climate simulations are of variable quality, depending upon the initial conditions,
the approximations employed for complex variables, the particular physics, the number
of variables, whether the simulation is a general circulation model, etc. Nevertheless,
the better general circulation models demonstrate that the glacial climate of Siberia
(assuming uniformitarianism) would have been colder (about 10–20°C) than
today: ‘During glacial and stadial stages, the climate of Siberia was much
colder than at present.’51
This deepens the mystery of why the lowlands of Siberia and Alaska were never glaciated!

Except possibly on Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean,52–54 the woolly mammoth
died out in Siberia at the end of the ice age. Furthermore, the woolly mammoth and
many of the other large mammals, including 33 genera from North America, disappeared
on whole continents or went extinct. There are two main hypotheses to account for
all this extinction at the end of the ice age: either they were killed by man in
a great blitzkrieg slaughter, or they died because of climate change.55 Uniformitarian scientists do not know the answer to
this, but it has been extraordinarily controversial for more than 200 years.
At a recent mammoth conference, Alroy expressed his frustration:

‘After many decades of debate, the North American end-Pleistocene megafaunal
mass extinction remains a lightning rod of controversy. The extraordinarily divergent
opinions expressed in this volume show that no resolution is in sight.’ 56

Non-creationist hypotheses

Such confounding enigmas, not only about the mammoth and the mammoth steppe fauna,
but also about the ice age itself, have naturally produced many hypotheses. Early
scientists produced a lot of confused writing. For example, Sir Henry Howorth,7,12 who gathered copious observations
from Siberian explorers that are considered fairly accurate, believed the mammoths
met their demise in a continental-scale flood, but that this flood was not Noah’s
Flood.

Immanuel Velikovsky wrote two influential popular books on astral and earth catastrophes,
called Worlds in Collision57
and Earth in Upheaval.58
In these books the demise of the woolly mammoths in Siberia played a lead role.
He weaved the mysteries of the mammoth, the ice age, and many other puzzles from
the earth sciences into a catastrophic adventure featuring Venus and Mars, occurring
about 3,500 years ago. Velikovsky is sharp at pointing out the many earth science
puzzles of the past, which a large number of scientists seem to either ignore or
minimise. However, he cannot help but add an element of hyperbole, such as the following
in referring to the ‘muck’ of Alaska:

‘Under what conditions did this great slaughter take place, in which millions
upon millions of animals were torn limb from limb and mingled with uprooted trees?’
59

His mechanism for explaining the extinction of the woolly mammoth, supposedly living
in a warm climate and then suddenly being quick frozen, is a catastrophic poleshift
to a more vertical Earth axis (to warm the region up) and then back again to near
the present23½ degrees (to cool it down). The idea of a quick freeze is based
mainly on the presence of food in the mammoths’ mouths and not enough time
for their last meals to decay in their stomachs. Other popular writers have accepted
and embellished Velikovsky’s ideas.60–62

Charles Ginenthal63 provides an
updated, more elaborate defense of Velikovsky’s pole shift hypothesis. There
is one major problem, among many, with Ginenthal’s and Velikovsky’s
hypothesis, and that is a pole shift to a more vertical axis will cool
the region, not warm it up.

Creationist hypotheses

The information on the woolly mammoths in Siberia is confusing, and most of it is
published in Russian. All this data, and the many hypotheses, were bound to influence
creationists, who also have been attempting to interpret the evidence in a catastrophic
framework related to the Flood. Harold Clark64
recognised that the extinction of the mammoths in Siberia was a major puzzle that
needed a creationist explanation: ‘One of the most perplexing phenomena of
geology is that of the so-called “frozen mammoths” of Siberia.’

Many creationists have leaned towards a Flood demise.65–68 Joseph
Dillow,69 who wrote an in-depth
book on the vapour canopy, focussed considerable
attention on how the woolly mammoth became extinct.70
He proposed that the hairy beasts were quick-frozen just before the Flood. Walter
Brown32 included a chapter in his hydroplate model
on what happened to the woolly mammoths. He proposed that the woolly mammoths died
during the Flood by a quick freeze. Dillow and Brown made several mistaken deductions
on the data related to the woolly mammoth and its environment in Beringia, such
as that there is over 1,200 m of ‘muck’ containing animal and vegetative
remains.71,72

Clark,64Harold Coffin,73
and myself 74 believe that the woolly
mammoth lived and died during the ice age after the Flood.

Did Siberian mammoths die in the Flood?

There is abundant evidence that the woolly mammoths in Siberia, Alaska and the Yukon
died after the Flood. They were truly denizens of the post-Flood ice age.

The woolly mammoth is part of an ice age mammoth steppe community that ranged across
the non-glaciated portions of the Northern Hemisphere (Figure 2).3
Strong arguments favour a post-Flood origin for the mammoth steppe animals outside
of Beringia. The animals are found in: 1) glacial till near the edge of the ice
sheets, 2) river flood plain debris, 3) river terraces, 4) tarpits, 5) caves or
rockshelters, 6) loess, 7) sinkholes, and 8) peat bogs. There are an estimated 51
predominantly male mammoths that are found in a sink hole at Hot Springs, South
Dakota.75 In northwest Siberia,
mammoths are found in sediments above glacial till.76 Spear points are associated with or embedded in the
remains of mammoths at a dozen or more localities in North America.77 Woolly mammoths are commonly depicted in cave art from
Europe eastward to the Russian plain and Ural Mountains.78,79 Ivory carvings
are rather common in early-man sites in southern Siberia.80 More than 70 mammoth bone huts have been discovered
on the Central Russian Plain.81,82 Such surficial features and deposits would be virtually
impossible to form during the Flood and must be post-Flood. To isolate
the woolly mammoths in Beringia for a special catastrophic extinction during the
Flood, while ignoring the fate of the remainder of the post-Flood mammoth steppe
fauna does not make sense.

Another strong argument against the mammoth death-in-the-Flood hypothesis is that
the Beringian animals are buried in unconsolidated surficial sediments overlying
lithified sedimentary rocks. If the animals were killed by an ice or hail
dump from space during the early Flood, as envisioned by Dillow and Brown, the animals
should be found in the lower portion of the sedimentary strata, a little above crystalline
rocks. This surficial sediment with indications of post-Flood processes lies upon
hundreds of meters of consolidated sedimentary rock that a large majority
of creationists would attribute to the Flood. For instance, the Selerikhan horse
carcass was found in frozen loam between peat layers and above a gold placer that
lay over Mesozoic rocks.83 The baby
mammoth, Dima, was found within slope wash on the 10 m terrace of the Kirgilyakh
River. The terrace was carved out of Jurassic shales and sandstones.84,85 Below the surficial
sediments that contain the mammoths, most of Siberia is composed of sedimentary
rocks from all ages of the geological column.86
The bedrock below the Cape Deceit fauna of Kotzebue Sound, Alaska, consists of Paleozoic
metaÂ­limestone, Paleozoic schists, and Pliocene basalts.87

The post-Flood rapid ice age

Mammoth remains in the northern hemisphere are associated with events during the
ice age. However, uniformitarian ice age models cannot explain the mammoths, or
even the ice age itself. The August 18–25, 1997, issue of US News & World
Report had a long series of articles on eighteen great mysteries of science.
One of those mysteries is: ‘What causes ice ages?’88 The June 1996 issue of the popular earth science
magazine Earth, reported on a new theory of the ice age. Daniel Pendick89 starts his article titled ‘The
dust ages’ by saying: ‘If they hadn’t actually happened, the ice
ages would sound like science fiction’. However, the unique creationist
post-Flood ice age offers a reasonable solution for the mammoth mysteries.

Figure 4. Effect of volcanic dust on cooling of continental interiors.
Straight lines are solar radiation, partly reflected back to space by dust and aerosols.
Wavy lines are infrared radiation. The result is the inverse of the greenhouse effect.

The ice age was caused by the climatic aftermath of the Genesis Flood.55
As a result of this great tectonic and volcanic upheaval, the stratosphere would
have held great quantities of dust and aerosols immediately after the Flood. Copious
post-Flood volcanism would have reinforced the polluted stratosphere. Thus sunlight
would have been partially reflected back to space from the volcanic products trapped
in the stratosphere (Figure 4). Less sunlight would have meant cooler land surfaces,
as was observed at various locations after the great volcanic eruption in ad 535.90 During the Flood, warm water
from the ‘fountains of the great deep’ would have produced a warm post-Flood
ocean. Evaporation would be much greater at mid and high latitude than today due
to the much warmer water. Copious evaporation close to the ice sheets would have
been most favourable for their rapid growth. After many centuries, once the oceans
cooled, the ice sheets would have melted rapidly. Many other aspects of the ice
age have been estimated, including the average thickness of the ice sheets, the
length of the ice age, the number of ice ages, etc.55

Mammoth population explosion

Was there enough time for the mammoth population to increase to millions by the
end of the post-Flood ice age? We can estimate the mammoth growth after the Flood
by examining the reproductive habits of African elephants, a good analogue.91

The elephant reproductive rate can vary significantly.92
Elephants do not reach sexual maturity until age 10 to 23.93 They live 50 to 60 years. Eltringham94 states that generally, elephants produce a calf
at intervals of four to five years with twins 1.35 % of the time. However, some
have suggested that elephants can give birth every two to three years, and there
is a case of a zoo elephant giving birth two years and five months after its first
birth.95 The reproductive rate is
especially enhanced in a favourable environment as when the population is low or
the animals are being hunted regularly.92,96–99
There are no natural enemies for a mature elephant, except man,100 but calves are subject to predation.So, mammoths
have the potential to increase rapidly following the Flood.

Based on doubling rates of 10 years101
and 25 years91 observed in Africa, there would be
(assuming ideal circumstances with no predation or calf mortality) 2.1 million mammoths
in 300 years or 8 million mammoths in 550 years,102
respectively. In other words, there should be no problem for the population of woolly
mammoths to reach many millions toward the end of the ice age some 600 years after
the Flood.

The post-Flood rapid ice age would have had milder winters and cooler summers with
little if any permafrost, mainly because the Arctic and North Pacific Oceans were
warm, and ice-free.55 It would not have been
the formidable landscape observed today or deduced from uniformitarian ice age expectations.
Since the lowlands of Beringia were not glaciated, another uniformitarian conundrum,
Beringia would have been a favourable environment for many mammals.

Extinction of the mammoths at end of ice age

Of all the questions related to the mammoths, their extinction has been the most
perplexing. It was not only mammoths that became extinct at the end of the ice age,
but also many other large animals. Why? We will first discuss their extinction in
Siberia and then the extinction of the mammoths and other ice age mammals on whole
continents or worldwide.

Were woolly mammoths quick-frozen in Siberia?

The existence of carcasses with identifiable stomach remains and well-preserved
bones and tusks has suggested a ‘quick-freeze’ to many. This has been
reinforced by the research of the Birds Eye Frozen Foods Company, which calculated
a sudden fall to below -100°C based on heat conduction.103

Creationist quick-freeze advocates32,69
postulate that the quick-freeze was directly related to the Flood. However, as previously
discussed in the section ‘Did Siberian mammoths die in the Flood?’ the
evidence is strong that the Siberian mammoths are buried in post-Flood sediments
associated with the ice age. All the arguments presented in that section, such as
the mammoths of Beringia being part of one Northern Hemisphere ice age fauna, would
apply against the quick-freeze hypothesis.

Figure 5. Headless horse in mine shaft indicates that some time
elapsed between when the animal was trapped and final burial. Guthrie’s cartoon145 speculates how the horse
was trapped in a bog with its head and neck exposed, which was subsequently eaten
by a carnivore. The sixth picture illustrates how the legs of the horse protruded
into the mine shaft. One of its hind legs was used to attach cables and hang lanterns.
The horse could have just as easily been mired in wind-blown dust as in a bog. Indeed,
the horse was found in loam, sandy loam and sand with a steppe-like sporo-pollen
complex,146 typical of wind-blown
deposits and vegetation.

There are other arguments against the quick-freeze hypothesis.

1. The number of frozen carcasses, in spite of under-reporting, is very small compared
to the number of mammoth bones that underwent normal decay and are entombed in the
permafrost.104,105

2. The carcasses are often partially decayed with fly pupae and display signs of
scavenging,3,79,106,107 not expected during a quick-freeze.

3. The unique condition of several of the carcasses, such as the famished condition
of Dima and the headless Selerikhan horse (Figure 5),3,83 indicate some time elapsed before final burial.

4. For some of the carcasses, death appears to have occurred at different times
of the year.83,108
A quick-freeze during the Flood, especially as advocated by some creationists, would
have occurred in a single instant.

5. The characteristics of the permafrost that entombs the carcasses and bones, show
that it was not dumped quickly from above. It is doubtful that ice wedges would
form during a quick drop of ice or hail from above.

How are the stomach contents explained?

The fact that the stomach contents were only partially decayed can be explained
satisfactorily by understanding the digestive physiology of the elephant, which
was little known until the 1970s.109
From studying 50 freshly killed elephants, it was discovered that the main digestive
process of elephants does not occur in the stomach, but after the food
passes the stomach, especially in the caecum and colon.109,110 Digestion is achieved mainly by
bacteria and protozoa. Yet the researchers found no protozoa, no
fermentation and very little hydrolysis of cellulose taking place in the stomachs,
although the stomach had a very acidic pH of about 2. This high acidity is expected
to partially degrade the stomach vegetation. It is clear, therefore, that the stomach
is mainly a storage area before digestion.111,112

Further evidence that the stomach contents should not necessarily decay completely
upon death is provided by the preserved stomach contents of mastodons found in North
America. Preserved vegetation from the gastrointestinal tracts of mastodons, which
are generally found in former peat bogs, have occasionally been reported from the
northeast United States.113–115 Recently, the skeleton of a mastodon was
discovered within peat on top of an ice age end-moraine in Ohio.115
The remains yielded a discrete, cylindrical mass of plant material found in association
with the articulated vertebrae and ribs.

Thus a quick chill is not needed to explain the partially preserved stomach contents
of the mammoth carcasses.

The big chill and desiccation at the end of the ice age

Near the end of the ice age, as the ocean surface temperature cooled at mid and
high latitude, and evaporation slowed, the equable ice age climate would have changed
to a drier, more continental climate with more seasonal extremes.116 Permafrost would begin developing in Beringia, and
the substrate would become boggier in summer. As the climate became more continental
during deglaciation, many animals in Siberia would tend to migrate closer to the
Arctic Ocean, where the waters were still unfrozen and the climate would have been
less continental. However, the changing climate finally caught up with them and
they ended up buried in the permafrost that has continued to this day.

Extinction of woolly mammoths in Siberia

With this climatic change, there are a number of ways the mammoths and other animals
could have died and become interred into the permafrost. One is by becoming trapped
in bogs.73 I once thought the cold and wind, itself,
could have simply killed them off,117
but it is probable that the mammoths could have endured much cold. I am sure some
of the animals were trapped by the flooded rivers draining ice sheets and were buried
in fluvial or lacustrine deposits.83,118 Upon further investigation, I now believe the vast
majority of the mammoths and other mammals died and were interred into the permafrost
by none of the above mechanisms. I believe the secret to their demise and
burial can be found in the type of sediment surrounding the woolly mammoths.

According to those who have studied these deposits, the vast majority of the animals
are found in the ‘yedomas’ of Siberia22
and the ‘muck’ of Alaska. The yedomas, a Yukut term, are hills 10–20
m, sometimes up to 60 m, high, containing a large percentage of ground ice.119,120 The hills
formed after a period of post-ice-age surficial permafrost melting. Muck is the
name given by gold miners to the organic-rich material deposited above gold-bearing
gravels in Alaska and the Yukon Territory.121
Vereshchagin122 states that the
yedomas contain a great abundance of mammal bones:

‘The great abundance of bones of large herbivores in the Yedoma is convincing
evidence of the rich pasturage offered by this region during the Pleistocene ….’

What type of sediment makes up the yedomas and muck? There has been much controversy
and a number of hypotheses on the origin of this sediment. There is now general
agreement that the yedomas and muck are loess—a wind-blown silt!121,123–127
Much data support the wind-blown origin of this sediment. The loess is also rich
in ground ice and ice wedges. The ground ice formed by a segregation process in
which layers and lenses of ice, sometimes clear and sometimes inter-mixed with sediment,
developed within the silt.128–130 The loess is not thousands of
feet deep in Siberia and Alaska, as some have thought, but is a relatively thin
veneer that is widespread in Beringia.123,125,131,132
Some of the loess, especially in Alaska, has been reworked by downslope mass flow.
Redeposition of the loess has broken and twisted the vegetation and disarticulated
mammal bones, and this has inspired Velikovsky and others to suggest exotic catastrophes.

In the post-Flood ice age model, strong wind would have characterised the big chill
and dessication during deglaciation.133
In a dry environment, this wind would have picked up and transported large quantities
of silt and sand. Abundant wind-blown material is observed as relic features of
the ice age in the Northern Hemisphere. Copious wind-blown dust even occurs in the
ice age portion of the Greenland and Antarctica ice cores. It is known that mammoths
and other mammals are entombed in loess in other areas.122,134–136
Thus, it seems likely that the mammoths in Beringia were mostly killed and buried
by dust storms.

Dust storms of variable intensity likely blew from time to time for a few hundred
years near the end of the ice age. The animals could have died from the direct effect
of the dust or some other cause. Regardless, the dust would have buried their remains
fairly quickly. The characteristics of the small number of carcasses that must have
been buried very rapidly can likely be explained by gigantic dust storms.
From the Dust Bowl era in the midwest of the United States, it is known that a dust
storm can produce dust drifts several meters high, burying tractors and partially
covering buildings. It is possible that dust storms at the end of the ice age would
be so intense that they could cover and suffocate a woolly mammoth trying to survive
the storm. It may even be possible to suffocate a mammoth by the strong wind and
blowing dust. The animal would have been buried quickly, since the animal would
act like a snow fence. It is not inconceivable that a few of these animals would
have been left in a standing position, braced by the dust around them. The permafrost
would then move upward after the loess was deposited and rapidly freeze
the remains, thus accounting for the rapid burial, which seems impossible any other
way. The broken bones of the Beresovka mammoth could easily be explained by the
shifting of ground ice and frozen sediment137—
in other words a diagenetic, post-mortem effect of shifting permafrost.138,139 Although
some researchers lean toward such a diagenetic explanation, there was considerable
blood near the wound of the foreleg of the Beresovka mammoth. Bleeding had occurred
between the muscles and the fatty and connective tissues.140

Mammoth fauna extinction elsewhere

The mammoths and many of the other animals went extinct either over the whole world
or on continents they once inhabited. This occurred at the end of the ice age and
probably into early post-glacial time. The mystery has a reasonable solution within
the post-Flood ice age model.141

The animals thrived during the ice age because the temperatures were more
equable with cool summers and milder winters. (Note that much of the continental
land mass was never covered by ice sheets, even during the ice age.) The disharmonious
associations of plants and animals all over the Northern Hemisphere during the ice
age are evidence of this equable climate. But, this equable climate ended during
deglaciation, and the climate became more continental with colder winters and warmer
summers. The existence of ice sheets, the development of sea ice and eventually
a cooler ocean than today, would have resulted in less evaporation and a drier climate.
The cold winters and dry climate would stress the animals all across the Northern
Hemisphere. The larger mammals would have been especially susceptible to drought.
Thus climate change likely was the main cause of the end-of-the-iceâ€‘age
extinctions. The reason the large animals did not die out at the end of previous
glaciations is because there were no previous glaciations.142 Man likely aided the extinction process by harvesting
weakened animals.

Conclusion

Carcasses and bones of woolly mammoths in Siberia, Alaska, and the Yukon have been
difficult to explain. The mammoth remains are abundant over the mid and high latitudes
of the Northern Hemisphere, except in formerly glaciated areas. There are probably
millions of them buried in the permafrost of Siberia alone. A wide variety of other
mammals, large and small, accompanied the mammoth. Many of these animals are grazers,
implying that the paleoenvironment of Beringia was a grassland with a wide diversity
of plants. This diversity of plants and animals points to a longer growing season
with milder winters and very little permafrost.

This paleoenvironment is contrary to what is observed in Beringia today, with its
very cold winters and boggy substrate in summer. Scientists constrained by uniformitarian
thinking seem to face conundrum after conundrum in regard to the life and death
of the woolly mammoth in Beringia, as well as by the ice age itself. A uniformitarian
ice age climate would have been even colder still. It is difficult to conceive that
the woolly mammoth and all the other animals could have lived in Siberia under these
conditions. It is obvious the uniformitarian assumption does not apply. Thus, many
hypotheses, both creationist and non-creationist, have been proposed. Creationists
have been divided on whether the woolly mammoth perished in the Flood or afterwards.
A number of creationist hypotheses involve a quick freeze, because it was thought
that the state of preservation of the carcasses with only half-decayed vegetation
in their stomachs demanded it.

Reasonable explanations for all these mysteries are available within the context
of a unique post-Flood ice age. Astral catastrophies, pole shifts and other such
exotic hypotheses are not needed. A quick freeze is also not necessary, and besides,
there is much data against the hypothesis. There is strong evidence that the woolly
mammoth died after the Flood during the ice age. There was enough time for the population
of the mammoths to have grown to millions by the end of the ice age. Furthermore,
this unique ice age was characterised by colder summers and warmer winters, resulting
in a more favourable habitat for the animals in the non-glaciated lowlands of Beringia.
The animals became extinct at the end of the ice age because the climate changed
to a more continental climate, with colder winters and warmer summers, and drier
conditions. There is copious data against the hypothesis of a quick freeze. The
state of preservation of the stomach contents are better explained by the post-gastric
digestive system of elephants in which the stomach is mainly a holding pouch for
vegetation.

The question of how the mammoths died in Beringia can be answered by analysing the
sediments surrounding the mammoths and other animals. They are mostly entombed in
yedomas in Siberia and muck in Alaska. These are mostly loess and reworked loess.
It is postulated that the animals were buried by dust storms, whether they met their
demise directly by wind-blown silt or not. The carcasses and other perplexing data
associated with the carcasses, such as death by suffocation, entombment while in
a standing position, and broken bones, can be explained by death during gigantic
dust storms and post-mortem shifting of the permafrost.

Acknowledgments

I thank Mark Russell, Kirk Toth, Dave Jolly, and Glen Wolfrom for providing hard-to-obtain
literature and for providing data on the woolly mammoths. I also thank Tas Walker
and others at CMI–Australia, for their valuable suggestions and Harold Coffin
for reviewing the manuscript and suggesting a number of changes.

References

Guthrie, R.D., Frozen Fauna of the Mammoth Steppe—The
Story of Blue Babe, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1990.
Return to text.

Kahlke, R.D., The History of the Origin, Evolution and Dispersal
of the Late Pleistocene Mammuthus-Coelodonta Faunal Complex in Eurasia (Large
Mammals), Mammoth Site of Hot Springs, South Dakota Inc., Hot Springs,
SD, 1999. Return to text.

Kaplina, T.N. and Lozhkin, A.V., Age and history of accumulation
of the ‘ice complex’ of the maritime lowlands of Yakutiya; in: Velichko,
A.A. (ed.), Late Quaternary Environments of the Soviet Union, University
of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN, pp. 147–151, 1984. Return
to text.

Fraser, T.A. and Burn, C.R., On the nature and origin of ‘muck’
deposits in the Klondike area, Yukon Territory, Canadian J. Earth Sciences34:1333–1344, 1997; p. 1333. Return to text.

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